Posted on 01/25/2005 2:58:28 PM PST by csbyrnes84
Father Paul Sretenovic, a priest of the Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey, who was ordained to the priesthood in 2002, has abandoned the Novus Ordo in order to embrace Catholic Tradition without compromise. Father Sretenovic (pronounced Stre-ten-o-vich) informed his ordinary, the Most Reverend John Myers, the Archbishop of Newark, of his decision in a letter mailed to his Excellency’s home address on the Feast of the Holy Innocents, Wednesday, December 28, 2004:
“Your Excellency: I am writing to inform you of my decision to leave the Archdiocese of Newark. It is a decision that is eighteen months in the making, and it has finally come to a head. This archdiocese, while retaining some very good priests, is, like every other diocese in the Catholic Church today, plagued by the heresy of modernism in many different forms. I recently attended a Monday afternoon of Reflection at Southmont with the Opus Dei priests and listened as one of them said that we are not looking to return to Christendom. To me, that said it all. It is not just about the Latin Mass. It is something much, much deeper, and it is the basis of my decision. Pope Pius XI in his encyclical, Quas Primas, said that Jesus Christ is not only the Lord of every individual, but also of every human society. The Syllabus of Errors of Blessed Pius IX, #77, in particular, exposes the error of separation of Church and State, a doctrine now upheld by the Vatican as the ideal, using both the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Liberty, which could very easily have been called the Declaration of Religious Liberty (reference to our Declaration of Independence intended), as well as individual decisions from the Vatican to accelerate such a separation in what were otherwise thoroughly Catholic countries, such as, among others, Colombia, 98% Catholic. The orientation of the Church is now very much in line with the principles of the French Revolution, namely liberty, fraternity, and equality. Hence, the mainstay catchwords from the Council—religious liberty, ecumenism, and collegiality. That is not a coincidence, and it is evil. The Liturgy is just one of the many lambs to be slaughtered along the way towards a Christian Democracy, which, to the dismay and shock of many in the Church, will lead directly to the worldwide takeover of Atheistic Communism, warned of indirectly by Our Lady of Fatima in 1917, and communicated by Sr. Lucia to the Catholic historian William Thomas Walsh in 1946. Russia has still not been consecrated, and she continues to spread her errors until one day, it will be too late. In the meantime, I choose to exercise my priesthood in the way intended by Almighty God, teaching sound doctrine and leading the flock by holiness of life, as St. Paul exhorted St. Timothy in his pastoral epistle.
“In the situation in which I am now, and basically in any Novus Ordo parish anywhere in the world, let alone this particular Archdiocese, I always have to watch my back and I always, at each and every Mass that I offer, have to compromise. Whether it is in the bad wording or bland prayers of the Sacramentary, or in the distribution of Communion in the hand, or in the virtually mandatory use of Extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, there is always something there to remind me, as the song goes, and it stops now. I pray to God and to Our Blessed Mother that you obtain the grace necessary to perceive the gravity of the present situation and to act accordingly. I include my email address below for further correspondence. I know this is a shock, but for me, even the FSSP would be a compromise. Haven’t we all done enough of that?! As people were looking East this Advent season, Our Lady was leading me to, go West. In Christ the King, Fr. Paul Branko Sretenovic.”
In an e-mail to this writer sent on January 9, 2005, Father Sretenovic explained the sequence of events after this point:
“To give you the backdrop of my correspondence with the Archbishop, he said that parts of what I wrote, without specifying, were ‘inaccurate’ and ‘unfair.’ I responded through the Vicar General for the time-being that what I wrote was not ‘inaccurate’ and ‘unfair.’ I then asked the question as to whether the Archbishop would say that Cardinal Ratzinger was either of the two, specifying the terms, when he wrote that through the Council, the Church had ‘come to terms with the principles of 1789.’ I left it at that and will write the Archbishop directly within the week.”
Father Sretenovic had determined quite clearly that he could no longer make any further compromises with a Mass that did not give God the full honor and glory that are His due and a pastoral approach to the problems of the world that was premised upon a rejection of a defined teaching of the Catholic Church, the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ, and an actual embrace of the errors of Modernity and Modernism.
Father Sretenovic did indeed head west, leaving Our Lady, Queen of Peace Church in Maywood, New Jersey, on Thursday, December 29, 2004, the Feast of Saint Thomas a Becket, to drive out to Our Lady Help of Christians Church in Garden Grove, California, joining Father Patrick J. Perez and Father Lawrence C. Smith in the offering of the Traditional Latin Mass and the totality of the Catholic Faith in all of its integrity to Catholics in one of the most liturgically revolutionary places in the whole Church, the Metropolitan Province of Los Angeles, California. Father Sretenovic distributed Holy Communion to the faithful at Our Lady Help of Christians on the Feast of the Holy Family on Sunday, January 9, 2005, saying, “I have never before felt like I did in my first Traditional giving of the Eucharist, or however you want to put it. It was awesome and I felt like a priest in a way that I haven't before. The formula is much better, not to mention the signing of the Cross, and the use of the paten for the Sacred Particles, AND the posture of the people with open mouths, heads tilted upwards like chicks eagerly welcoming their mother with the food that she is providing for them.” [He offered his first Traditional Latin Mass there on Sunday, January 16, 2005.]
Father Sretenovic, who was born on January 8, 1974, found his way to Our Lady Help of Christians within three months of meeting Father Perez at Father Nicholas Gruner’s Fatima conference in Glendale, California, at the end of September, 2004. Father Perez’s mother, Mrs. Margaret Perez, saw Father Sretenovic and told him that he had to meet her son, making sure that the two of them sat down for dinner after Father Perez’s talk at the conference. Father Sretenovic was impressed with Father Perez’s knowledge of the Faith and of the development of the Mass. Mr. John Vennari, the editor of Catholic Family News, also spoke to Father Sretenovic about the crisis in the Church and of the necessity of fleeing from the Novus Ordo structures. Seeds were being planted.
Father Sretenovic contacted this writer in early December of 2004, and a luncheon meeting was arranged in Wayne, New Jersey, following a First Friday Mass at Our Lady of Fatima Chapel in Pequannock, New Jersey, on December 3, 2004. This writer and his wife, to put it charitably, pummeled Father Sretenovic, asking him bluntly as to how long he could continue to give out Communion in the hand and continue to offer a Mass that less fully communicates the truths of the Catholic Faith and does not render God the full honor and glory that are His due. Father Sretenovic listened, particularly to Mrs. Droleskey’s heartfelt plea to give Our Lord and His flock unfettered access to the fullness of the Catholic Faith. Father Sretenovic promised to contact Fathers Perez and Smith. He also wrote fairly immediately to Father Stephen P. Zigrang, whose association with the Society of Saint Pius X prompted the soon-to-be promoted Archbishop of Galveston-Houston, the Most Reverend Joseph Fiorenza, a protégé of the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, to suspend him for an association with a “schismatic” group that, among other things, denied the “enduring validity of the Old Covenant God made with the people of Israel.”
Father Sretenovic carefully weighed his options, keeping in close contact with Father Lawrence C. Smith, who left the Diocese of Davenport, Iowa, on September 8, 2003. Father Sretenovic also had contact with priests in the Society of Saint Pius X, determining ultimately that it would be best for him to be with Fathers Perez and Smith in California. Father was most intent on placing himself in a situation where the gaps in his preparation for priestly ordination could be closed and he could concentrate on his own personal sanctification while offering Catholics the Immemorial Mass of Tradition. He arrived at his decision after a great deal of reflection and a bit of indecision, coming to the conclusion in the final analysis that he needed to make a clean break from the diocesan structure sooner rather than later, understanding that the faithful have a right in perpetuity to the Traditional Latin Mass, which can never be subject justly to any limitations or conditions by any bishop, including the Pope himself. Father Smith was most instrumental in helping Father Sretenovic to come to this decision, saying that “it was his call that put me over the edge. Within 20 minutes after my conversation with him, I was writing my letter” to Archbishop Myers.
Father Sretenovic was not heedless of the fact that his own ordinary, Archbishop Myers, though not a traditionalist himself, has been sympathetic to priests desirous of offering the Traditional Latin Mass. Father Sretenovic also understood, however, that the embrace of Tradition, while it starts with the Mass, involves quite fundamentally an embrace of the totality of the Catholic Faith without any taint of corruption by the novelties and errors of the past forty to forty-seven years. Father Sretenovic also knows that ordinaries come and go, a point demonstrated quite graphically when Bishop John Myers of Peoria, Illinois, was elevated to the archbishopric of Newark. Although Bishop Myers had granted permission to Father Michael Driscoll, the pastor of Saint Mary’s Church in Rock Island, Illinois, to offer the Traditional Latin Mass on a daily basis, that permission was revoked by Myers’s successor, Bishop Michael Jenky, who demoted Father Driscoll to the post of an assistant hospital chaplain at Saint Francis Hospital in Peoria. Father Sretenovic, understanding, as eight cardinals noted in a finding sent to Pope John Paul II in 1986, the binding nature of the Traditional Latin Mass can never be abrogated, did not want to subject himself to the vagaries of episcopal arbitrariness. He realized that he needed the stability offered by the Traditional Latin Mass for his own sanctification–and that the people have the absolute right to safe harbor found therein.
The story of Father Paul Sretenovic continues, therefore, a remarkable display of courage on the part of diocesan priests who have been willing to forsake all of their canonical safety and human respect in order to embrace Tradition without compromise. Men such as Fathers Sretenovic and Zigrang and Smith were ordained after the implementation of the liturgical revolution had begun. Father Zigrang was ordained in 1977. Father Smith was ordained in 1997. Father Sretenovic was ordained in 2002. Although there have been priests (such as Father Stephen Somerville) who were ordained in the Traditional rite and have returned thereto, the embrace of Tradition by priests who are relatively young (in the case of Father Zigrang) or very young (in the case of Fathers Smith and Sretenovic) is particularly galling to the liturgical revolutionaries, men and women who brook no opposition and who protest with great vehemence the glories of the “liturgical renewal.” How can it be, they ask themselves, that men who have been immersed in their handiwork all of their lives can become counter-revolutionaries and reject all of their “enlightened” schemes and programs?
The revolutionaries can protest all they want. The plain fact of the matter is that there are a number of priests across the nation who may be following the examples of Fathers Zigrang, Smith and Sretenovic. More than a handful of priests are on the fence as this is being written. Some are waiting for Rome to come to their “rescue” by means of an Apostolic Administration. Some are afraid of what will happen to their sheep should they simply leave their diocesan assignments. Others are simply afraid to pray for the graces to muster up the courage to stop participating in sacrileges such as the distribution of Communion in the hand. From the vantage point of one who travels great distances across the nation to get his family to the daily offering of the Traditional Latin Mass, it is time for our shepherds to give us our due, the Immemorial Mass of Tradition, understanding that Our Lady will take care of their temporal needs and that the rectitude of their actions will be understood fully only on the Last Day at the General Judgment of the Living and the Dead.
Indeed, the witness given by Fathers Zigrang, Smith and Sretenovic, as well as the witness given by the bishops and the priests of the Society of Saint Pius X, to the necessity of proclaiming the fullness of the Catholic Faith without compromise and without any dilution serves as an inspiration to the sheep who are seeking safety and security in the midst of doctrinal and liturgical instability and turmoil within the diocesan structures. They are willing to be calumniated, even by fellow traditionalists who have anointed themselves to be in the august and pristine "mainstream," in order to bear a witness to the authentic Tradition of the Church without any compromise at all. No loss of human respect and no amount of name-calling or sloganeering will ever deter them from giving their sheep the fullness of the Catholic Faith.
At least some of the sheep will respond when their shepherds put themselves on the line to give them what is their due, namely, the Traditional Latin Mass. Hundreds upon hundreds of people, for example, have found their way to Our Lady Help of Christians Church in Garden Grove, California. Most of these people have never heard of The Remnant, Catholic Family News, or Christ or Chaos. They've never heard of Christ the King College and most of them probably think that GIRM Warfare has something to do with bacteriology. They're just Catholics who understand that the first law of the Church is the salvation of souls and that they do not have to sit idly by and be subjected to the rot of conciliar novelties in the context of what pretends to pass for the Church's liturgy and catechesis. These good souls are fed up with what is going on in their local dioceses and parishes and they simply want the fullness of the Catholic Faith to be made manifest to them during Holy Mass and in the life of their parish. The same is true of the fifteen families who have found their way from Saint Andrew's Church in Channelview, Texas, to Queen of Angels Church in Dickinson, Texas (and Saint Michael the Archangel Chapel in Spring, Texas), following after their inimitable pastor, Father Zigrang. The sheep want Christ and His truth to be made manifest to them without novelty or dilution. This is nothing other than one of their baptismal birthrights as Catholics.
Father Paul Sretenovic finds himself some 3,000 miles away from his parents, who are residents of New Jersey. He has gone this distance to serve sheep without compromise. He is in need of our prayers. More of his brother priests need to follow his example of humility and fidelity, to say nothing of his courage. As a son of Our Lady, Father Sretenovic has entrusted himself entirely to her Immaculate Heart. He knows that she will take good care of him as he acts in the person of her Divine Son as a sacerdos. Father Sretenovic delivered his first sermon at Our Lady Help of Christians on Sunday, January 16, 2004, stating that he had come to realize that the devil has essentially used the hierarchy of the Church to communicate the belief that one can eat from all of the trees in the "garden" today (Judaism, Islam, the New Age Movement, Wicca, Modernism) except the tree of Tradition, from which it is forbidden to eat. He said that the Novus Ordo Missae breeds lukewarmness, crediting Father Paul Kramer’s The Devil’s Final Battle and this writer’s G.I.R.M. Warfare with helping him to see how he was stuck in this lukewarmness himself. His sermon resonated with the 700 parishioners in attendance at the three Masses offered at Our Lady Help of Christians.
Our Lady Help of Christians, pray for Father Sretenovic. Pray for all traditionally-minded priests to follow his example of pure love for Tradition without fear of the canonical and/or temporal consequences. Pray for us sheep, that we might make the sacrifices necessary to help our shepherds feed us with the pure milk of Tradition.
And,you go on,but the simple answer to your convoluted question is "no,that is not what I am saying".
On this thread alone,I have said more.
And,please note,I have never said he should be disregarded,only that he should be taken with a grain of salt. There is some widely cited passage from "MacBeth" that might merit some thought.
No, but you qualify for a couple yourself.
I feel very sorry for your wife and children. You are one sick puppy.
The attitude of the SSPX is best understood in this passage.
Luke 18 : 9
The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector
9To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: 10"Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee stood up and prayed about[1] himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.'
13"But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'
14"I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."
My grandfather met Angelo Roncalli in Italy years before he came Pope. He liked him very much. He thought he was very personable and real.
Your third paragraph: The complaint with present-day Feeneyites is that they have not repented and have thereby made themselves more Feeneyite than Feeney himself who at least had the fear of God to repent his pretensions and errors as they have not. Then they compound their misbehavior by denying to Feeney his earned right to be recognized as having repented. The spirit of these Feeneyites very much resembles the spirit of SSPX. Stiff-necked schism of the worst sort.
As to your fourth paragraph: The Second Commandment still pertains, however. It was in all the Bibles, however it was numbered. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, they God, in vain. If you are going to twist the meaning of Catholic tradition by trying to enlist the Fathers, the Doctors, the Councils, Saints, Apostles, etc., at least refrain from misusing the Lord Himself as a witness against the Church He guaranteed (which is NOT Marcel's little schism).
In your first paragraph, you are saying essentially that I ignore your "key points." Guilty. There is nothing new there that has not been chewed over infinitely with the schismatics here for years. Even if you claim not to be one.
Your second paragraph needs no further response and IS a minor point as to the origin of the term "Dark Ages."
Again as to your fourth paragraph, you are not reading the same schismatic vitriol that I am on these very threads. Assisi??? The Koran???? Jews???? Clown Masses????? Attacks on the validity of the Novus Ordo from those who cite the Vatican for the validity of the illicit SSPX Masses????? Provisionally denying the validity of four decades of ordinations and consecrations (thereby attempting to seduce the gullible to reject the Church established by Jesus Christ Himself and guaranteed by Him)??? The delusion that all of this knee-jerk revolution against Church and Pope John Paul II is somehow legitimately comparable to St. Athanasius, St. Catherine of Sienna and other heroes of the Faith when today's practitioners are heroes merely to their own ids and legends in their own minds. Actual Catholics have heard all too much of the lie that the RCC has somehow become "Protestant" while the schismatics are those who have kept their "moral hymens intact" by reviling pope and Church for excommunicating their craven excuses for heroes and declaring them in schism. Your tastes have been offended. Get over it! They pray the the pope receive "holy correction???????????" Just who the hell do Marcel's programmed robots think they are??????? Nobody died and left them God.
Your fifth paragraph: Michael Celarius ought not to be compared with such low-rent dissidents as Quinn, Daneels, Mahoney, or Marcel and Fellay for that matter.
Your sixth paragraph: I might ponder it when you have formally and publicly rejected as schism the Marcellian schism of SSPX and averred your agreement that each and every SSPX bishop has been actually excommunicated. Else, you may be adhering to schism. I don't listen to communists on economics, sportscasters on justice and morality or schismatics or heretics on the Church. None are qualified in such discussions. None are authoritative. Ted Kennedy cannot date my daughters much less drive them around either. Just common sense really. I will observe that the paragraph in question is understandably obtuse and circular in reasning as well.
In any event, I am simply a street-fighting elk and I leave the actual scholarship to actual Catholics like gbcdoj and ninenot who are obviously more qualified than I in defense of the Faith from the schismatic attack chihuahuas.
Thank you.
Get off you high horse. You and your little gang are more pharisical than anyone here.
One thing we can count on: Like most of us, he was a sinner. I am. Probably, with all due and genuine respect, you are too. Were his sins all forgiven? I don't know that either. Fr. Malachi clearly was a very committed liberal early in his priestly career and changed sharply in an orthodox direction thereafter. He said that he sought and obtained the permission of Paul VI to be released from the Jesuit order to undo the damage he personally had done previously as a liberal.
If that Jesuit seminarian had him as a teacher, it seems quite likely that it was before Fr. Malachi left the Jesuit order. Also, by the time Fr. Malachi left the Jesuit order it was no longer "God's Marines" but quite the contrary. He may or may not have been a "womanizer" and it would be very sad if he were but the order had every motive to blacken his reputation and is not, without corroboration uninfluenced by the order, very reliable. Like Rizzo said in Grease: There are worse things he could have done.
You are right in the fine distinction that his words may show his capacity for orthodox teaching rather than his orthodoxy. I do know that his ability to explain the insanity of the last several decades was indispensible in my remaining Catholic in times of crisis. That does not prove his orthodoxy either but it sure is a comfort to me.
Gerard P. has elsewhere indicated the possibility that Pope John Paul II may have fathered a child out of wedlock. Maybe. He at least appears to have been very much in love before entering his studies for the priesthood with a young woman summarily executed by the Gestapo by the side of a road for her involvement with anti-Nazi activity in a theater group in which he also participated. He went straight to Cardinal Sapieha's basement to hide when she was shot. So what! Whatever sins may have occurred were certainly forgivable and, given the evidence of his saintly priesthood, bishopric, papacy, et al., he has probably been forgiven. He is our pope in any event.
We understandably live in an age of ecclesiastical cynicism but we ought to resist overdoing it. Let us thank God for Fr. Malachi Martin and pray that the Perpetual Light shine upon his soul and the souls of all of the faithfully departed. Let us thank God for this truly wonderful pope whom he sent us in 1978 and has fortified for us ever since. Let us pray for his intentions.
Our little gang (one billion and counting) is called the Roman Catholic Church. Headquartered in the Vatican (as is traditional) it is RULED by the pope (as is traditional) at present Pope John Paul II. They know, that Roman Catholic Church.
You seem to have struck a nerve. Truth does that in the face of the fantasies of apostasy.
By George, I think you've got it!
Indeed. Seventeen years and counting but SSPXers are beginning to claim the invalidity of Holy Orders not served their way which has an awful lot of implications. JP II does not call them schismatics for nothing. He is a living prophet.
Are there really TWO ninenots???? I always wondered how he could do so much good in so little time. Does Mrs. NN know about this?
And, I'm simply saying it is more prudent to take his accusers with the grain of salt than Fr. Martin.
When asked, they simply provide no evidence that the man or any of the priests in his family were anything but wholly orthodox.
No one has cited a single publication, quotation or reference that makes the case that he was a liberal. Conversely, Bishop Sheen (as much as I like him)nevertheless lied about having a doctoral degree that he never had. He never admitted it but his cause for canonization goes on.
In fact, the only "mistake" I can ever see Fr. Martin committing was that despite his brilliant mind and ability to observe facts, he gave JPII the benefit of the doubt for far longer than he would've given anyone who was not the Pope.
As they say in Chicago Machine circles: "Don't Make No Waves! Don't Back No Losers!" (From the Milton Rakove book of the same name.)
Old Can'tDebbie has earned a place on my "ignore" list.
Troll, I fear. Hope Can'tDebbie doesn't LOOK like one, too.
In re: Daley, MarcelMouse, and adjectival phrases--
I believe it was Daley who was MOST offended when someone actually told the TRUTH about his activities--and you note the identical reaction with MarcelMouse's sheepfold on these threads.
Mine as well, along with 'ASP'. These discussions are so repetitive that I can script their responses.
Is there a trademark infringement or something on Adoremus using the language of the Romans for Novus Ordo Masses?
There are reforms and there are deforms. The latter were exemplified in the sixteenth century by a German Augustinian, one Father Luther (a sort of proto-Marcel in his attitude toward the papacy who also apostasized) giving rise to a necessity for the Council of Trent. The former would, for example, include unfortunate and quite unnecessary changes in the liturgy. It is difficult to understand how Novus Ordo harms souls oher than the souls of those who react in rage to anything that disagrees with their cultural tastes. Surely the Holy Sacrifice o the Mass, making the sacrifice of Jesus Christ immanent (present) upon the altar cannot be at fault since Christ ordered: "Do this in memory of Me." We may safely rely on Him not to require us to sin. One concludes that any unfortunate damage must be in the nature of self-inflicted damage such as is engaged in by those who attempt or accomplish suicide. Of course, if they succeed in so damaging their souls, the stakes are a lot higher.
At least religiously, Catholics are, by nature, conservatives and religiously orthodox. We are, of course the nearly 2,000 year-old Mother Church of Christianity, founded and uniquely guaranteed by Jesus Christ Himself. What could be more conaservative than that? Or more orthodox?
The dark lord presided defiantly at Econe not in Rome. He was excommunicated for it.
No, no, wait, I do think that was meant as, well, an uncivil remark, an insult even!!!! Maybe even dread "name-calling." Shall we whine together? Nah!
I don't really see any substance behind your apparent dislike of Archbishop LeFebvre.
Your arguments against the archbishop seem to stop short of having any doctrinal or logical backing. Instead you are relying on insults and platitudes. There is no position of the SSPX that denies any promise of Christ. However, you seem to indicate that there are promises of Christ that he did not make.
Can you doctrinally prove that any of the positions taken by the SSPX are against Christ's promises?
Regarding issues such as the Novus Ordo, you only have to look to archbishop Bugnini's intent and the intent of those seeking to hijack the Liturgical Renewal in the pre-conciliar and post conciliar era to see what they did.
And I would recommend that there are volumes written with point for point examples of the Novus Ordo's insufficiency in properly demonstrating the Catholic Faith. The very fact that Lutherans can use the Novus Ordo and never once think of being Catholic is proof of that.
The issues are cultural in that "cultus" meaning what a group "believes". And that is essential. There is a Catholic culture under attack by modernism.
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